A hanger is an excellent device for storing garments including shirts, pants, jackets, or any other type of garment made out of any particular material, be it natural or synthetic. If it can be worn, it can be hung. Hanging garments, however, presents a host of issues.
Generally, hangers have a tendency to cause bumps and creases in clothing, making it look unnatural or improperly cared for. For example, after washing and drying a particular garment such as a shirt, one may hang it on a typical plastic hanger. These hangers are relatively thin and provide very little support. Even if a shirt is perfectly placed upon such a hanger, after time, gravity pulls downward while the hanger stubbornly resists, leaving a perceptible aberration upon the shirt.
Various hangers have been developed to address these issues. Broad shouldered hangers, for example, provide much more support while eliminating the aberration problem. U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,201,298 and 6,964,360 are examples of such hangers. The problem with these types of hangers, however, is that they tend to be relatively expensive to manufacture, assemble, and ship. They may also be heavy. Other hanger forms such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,074,446 are generally formed into a given length and may only be efficiently used with garments of specific sizes. These captive design hangers lack adjustability.
A further limitation that is of particular note with broad shouldered hangers relates to the issue of efficiently using available closet space. These hangers require more horizontal space on the closet hanging rod, thus reducing the number of garments that may be hung. Moreover, in a poorly designed closet, one may be able to hang two dozen shirts in a row, but still be left with several inches of empty space below the shirts that cannot be realistically utilized.
Yet another limitation with all of the hangers described above is that more new hangers lead to more unnecessary waste. Perfectly good old hangers will likely be discarded to make room for the newly purchased hangers.
There is a need in the art for a hanger form that provides adequate support, that conserves valuable space, and that may be adapted to a wide variety of common hangers. It is to these ends that the hanger strap and shoulder covers have been developed.